Misconception #1: All Service Providers were created equal Reality: All Services are different. Consequence for sales. Only spend your sales efforts on those SPs who can combine/include your Value Proposition to strengthen/enrich their own Value Proposition and the combined Value Proposition is relevant and meaningful to SP’s target customers. Misconception #2: Service Providers know what [...]
Transformation and in particular Digital Transformation appear to be the ‘ordre du jour’ for many organisations these days. Understandably, Transformation is a massive challenge for all organisations. If you think change is hard, try transformation. “Recognition of the need to think differently is the first-step to Transformation.” If your organisation has already decided to embark [...]
What’s the difference between Change and Transformation? Aren’t they really the same thing? Let’s start out by defining Change and Transformation and understanding where they are, I believe, fundamentally different. Change Change is moving from an existing state to a new or different state. The challenge with change is to avoid returning to the initial [...]
Sell the Problem, Not the Solution. Sell the Disaster, Not Disaster Recovery. This may seem counter-intuitive, misguided or just plain wrong so let's start out by asking a more fundamental question. Why do people buy? Answer. For 1 of 2 reasons: To avoid Problems they don't want. (PAIN) To get Results they don't have. (GAIN) Where [...]
“Successful people start before they feel ready.” - attributed to Sir Richard Branson I like to ask groups that I am working with which is the more important: Strategy or Execution? This always results in a highly animated discussion about why strategy is the more important of the two. If the strategy is not in place to [...]
In the massively expanding world of virtualised services how can Cloud Service Providers stand out from the crowd and demonstrate that they are materially different? And secondly, how do you explain that your material differences are vital and critical for customer success? This is the dilemma today facing Leaders and Senior Executives at Cloud Service [...]
IDC predicts that 70% of CIOs will embrace a “cloud first” strategy in 2016. Talk to anyone about the Cloud today and you will hear a long list of advantages and benefits from flexibility to business agility to reduced operating costs to CAPEX -> OPEX and access to assets vs owning assets and all the [...]
Is the “Cloud” a Barrier to Customer Adoption? I was speaking recently with a colleague and friend in the Cloud eco-System. He is based in the UK and has pan-European responsibility for Cloud Services and he told me something extremely interesting. Fascinating in fact and I would like to share his insight with you. This [...]
What made you successful in the past will not make you successful in the future. “What got you here will not get you there.” - Marshall Goldsmith Using the past to understand the future When we look to the past to understand the future we compromise our ability to envision change and see a different [...]
All customers are vital to your business, but some are more vital than others. Some customers provide significant revenue today but will decrease over time. Others are small today but have huge growth potential. Some customers demand enormous resources and support, while others don’t and some customers are great references, recommenders and a major source [...]